Jane Seymour Biography

The young Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg changed her name to Jane Seymour when she was 17, because "it scanned nicely and rolled trippingly from the tongue".

Jane’s early leanings were towards ballet and, after training at the Arts Educational Trust for dance, she went on to dance with Russia's renowned Kirov Ballet. However, an injury sustained in her first performance put an end to her dancing career before it had even begun.

Jane turned her attentions to acting and, after a number of successful TV roles, she headed off to the US in search of the bright lights and leading roles.

Her film debut was as a chorus girl in Richard Attenborough's ‘Oh, What A Lovely War’ and, after her successful performance in the ‘Onedin Line’, she landed the role of Solitaire in the James Bond movie ‘Live and Let Die’.

A stint of stage roles were followed by a string of American TV roles including ‘Frankenstein: The True Story’ and ‘King David’. Jane went on to pick up a Golden Globe for her role in John Steinbeck's ‘East of Eden’.

While big time film success has so far eluded Jane, her television career is littered with major hits and accolades, such as ‘Jack, The Ripper’, ‘The Richest Man Alive’ and six seasons of ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’. Indeed, she has long been crowned the "Queen of the Mini-Series".

Never one to ease off on the work front, Jane published her first book, ‘Jane Seymour's Guide to Romantic Living’, in 1986 and went on to deliver a series of successful children's books. Whilst still acting, Jane started to devote an increasing amount of time to her painting and fashion empires.

Seymour returned to the big screen in 2005 playing Kathleen Cleary, wife of fictional U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William Cleary, in the comedy Wedding Crashers.

The following year she appeared in the short-lived TV series Modern Men, before taking a guest slot as a law-school professor on an episode of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. In 2007, she made another guest appearance in the ABC sitcom In Case of Emergency.

Seymour has been married no less than four times; Michael Attenborough between 1971 and 1973, Geoffrey Planer between 1977 and 1978 and David Flynn between 1981 and 1992 - with whom she had two children, Katherine and Sean. In 1993 she married James Keach, giving birth to twins Johnny and Kris two years later.